Far from the maddening crowd

I have come to realize that most of my blog posts are turning into self-reflective ones. On thinking deeper, I realize that I do indulge in a lot of introspection. In a way, my aim every day is to be a more perfect me.

Was I different? As time progresses, most of us forget to examine how we've changed over the years. Thanks to some advice I received from friends, I make it a point to regularly reflect on how I have changed. It is a very interesting intellectual exercise. You have get yourself to remember what you thought, felt and liked and what your mental make-up was at times in the past.

This is where blogging is helpful. A glance at your old posts would give you an idea of what and who you were some years ago in the past. Here is my old blog (or one of my old ones). When I go through it now, I feel silly. If I knew the log in and password to access this blog, I would have deleted it. How different was I? I used to feel strongly about issues outside of me: traffic, programming, cricket etc. It is not that I do not think about all this now but I certainly do not have any 'feelings' about these things; at least certainly not have feelings strong enough to warrant a blog post.

Somehow, somewhere life has come to revolve lesser and lesser about these things. So there is a Anna Hazare. It is not important that I do not know what he is fighting for. It is important that I do not care to know what he is fighting for. He is just an example. There are so many things that are happening out there in the world which I do not care to know more of. I am, for bad or for worse, far from the maddening crowd.

Sometime during those years when I was able to churn out blog posts about all those 'world-ish' things, I remember to have read an article in The Hindu titled 'Rebels without a cause'. I do not remember anything about the article but the title of the article had a huge impact on me. Anna Hazare is a rebel if you want to call him that. And he is surely a rebel with a cause. So are the thousands who flock to meet and greet him and attend his speeches etc.

But for every such rebel with a cause, there must be a hundred rebels without a cause. These are the millions who have an opinion on something they do are not directly involved with. It is like me having an opinion on Ganguly's batting on some blog post. Pointless.

To me, not having an opinion about something is a strong statement. And personally, it means that that 'something' is not on my critical path in life. I am a rat, wanting to remain a rat. All these 'somethings' which people make a huge noise about, do not show up in my racetrack. I can at best acknowledge their existence. Ask me for an opinion and you will get nothing.